Here you will find how to calculate your current level in language required by The Language Experiments.

This is not same as CEFR levels A1, A2, B1, B2… or anything like that. Purpose of this to descibe very precisely your level in every segment of language learning process.

Reason to go in details

There are 2 persons:

A – Very good at grammar, great pronunciation you will realize that she is not native only if you have longer conversation, from few sentences it’s not possible, but she sometimes has problem to understand when people talk fast, active vocabulary 7000 words, passive 10000 so also if you talk about some specific field she will be lost faster than in general conversations. She knows struggles of someone learning foreign language and she even teaching people language she learned, and she doing it great.

B – You can spot that she is foreigner from first 2-3 words she will tell, but she is living in foreign country, she is manager of big team and she almost never asking people to repeat something, because she can understand language very good, her active vocabulary is 10000 words and passive around 20000, but if you ask her to teach you something other than vocabulary it won’t be so helpful.

Now question. Who is better in that language A or B? Whatever you answer you will be right and wrong at same time 🙂 Persons mentioned are not fiction, but real example, vocabulary size is our subjective guess.

Probably you understand now what is our goal here.

Areas

Different areas we can measure separately are:

• Vocabulary size – we are asking a person to do test to measure how many words he knows
• Listen – Understand what other person saying
• Speak – Answer questions in dialogue
• Read – Read to show your pronunciation
• Write – Write in target language
• Translate – Translating from your language to language you are learning
• Indirect knowledge
  • Known languages – What languages user knows and on what level
  • Writing system – Is person on some way familiar with this writing system
  • Location – Living in area when that language is spoken
  • Education – Had it as subject in school

Guided test scenario

Whole test will be done using google meet.

We will record screen and we will tell that before we start recording.

1. First questionare:
   1. Do you know something about X language?
   2. What languages do you know and on what level?
      1. Ask additional question if it’s not obvious
   3. Do you know to read language X
   4. Do you know to write in language X
2. We will have written dialogue, in language we are checking, example scenario (translate it):
   1. What day was yesterday.
   2. What is your name.
   3. When you went last time to a market?
   4. Do you know to count from 20 to 25? Don’t answer using only one word.
   5. Describe what you see in this picture (show him picture with a lot of details, try to not to use something from totally not related culture)
3. After this, give him to read 5 sentences to see how will he pronounce them
4. After this have spoken dialogue, don’t try to talk slower than it is normal. Here are example questions
   1. How are you?
   2. What is the color of trees?
   3. How old are you?
   4. Tell me 5 items every house probably has.
   5. Describe what you see in this picture?
5. If they are advanced ask them 10 words from C2 level, that you expect they will don’t know.

Grading

Numbers in the list below are connected with numbers in the list in previous section.

1. we are not grading this, it’s used just to ensure that there is no unfair advantage, and at beginning it’s used to calculate
2. Grade it on the scale 0-10. For first 4 sentences, give 1 point  for every correct answer. For picture description give grade from 0-6.
3. Grade it from 0 to 3. 0 don’t know to read,  1 very bad pronunciation, 2 good, 3 like native
4. Grade it on the scale 0-10 using same rules like in the #2 written example
5. Give them 1 point for every word.

Automated test

Everything described above we should have in form of test where the whole testing will be stored in our software so you can do the test without asking anyone to check it.

This could be automated just for languages added to Langoid till B2. If language is added till lower level some parts of this test can’t be the same but still test can be used.